In-vehicle infotainment services have expanded greatly over the last decade, and now it is often possible to connect a vehicle computer to a remote server while the vehicle is in motion. Through these types of connections, data, vehicle information and remote system calls can be sent and received, providing for a mobile, wirelessly connected environment.
Although the vehicular systems are capable of remote communication, they will typically need some form of signal transport to communicate with a remote source. That is, they typically do not have embedded communication capabilities, but rather rely on, for example, a user wireless device to transport signals to and from the remote source(s).
In one example, the user's cellular phone can be used. Through either a user data plan or data-over-voice, data is sent from the vehicle system, to the user's phone, to the remote source, and back over the same path.
Data over voice solutions, however, may be proprietary in nature and expensive. Certain measures must be taken to maintain data integrity and ensure compatibility, and the nature of the data transfer may result in a relatively low data rate. Data connections, utilizing a user data plan, tend to be faster, but they are limited to instances where a user phone actually has a data plan, and may further require a native application on the device to manage the data session.